We sat down with Scott Montgomery, the general manager of Scott USA to discuss the recent Tour de France drug scandal involving Saunier-Duval / Scott athletes Ricardo Ricco and Leonardo Piepoli.
ST: Scott, what an emotional roller coaster you must have gone through during this year’s Tour de France. Can you tell us about it?
Scott: We went into the Tour de France with zero expectations. The team had given their all at the Giro and it is very challenging to do well in two tours. We sent Ricco’ because we thought he might be able to win a stage and gain experience for the future. When they started dominating we were both thrilled, and slightly nervous because frankly Ricco’ just looked too strong. Then of course it all came crashing down.
ST: Did you find out about Ricco via the news or via the team?
Scott: Actually Frankie Andreu, a long time friend was the first to inform me via a text message, he of course covers the event for the Vs. network. Though we had been asking Mauro Gianetti to insure all was clean. I had spoken to him just the night before to congratulate him and he was of course riding on cloud 9 at that moment.
ST: Knowing how much lead-time ads in print magazines have, were you frantically trying to pull some ads which congratulated Ricardo Ricco / Leonardo Pieopoli?
Scott: There we got lucky. We had already run the Giro win ads. We were in the process of preparing further ads, but the timing meant we had not inserted any Tour win ad. Though I can promise we had to change a bunch of images in our upcoming 2009 catalogs.
ST: We heard that Saunier-Duval pulled their sponsorship and rumors are that SRAM is considering the same thing. What do you know about that and how did you arrive at your decision?
Scott: Well as we now know Saunier Duval is out, and I do not blame them. But we have decided to stand behind the team, and have actually stepped in as title sponsor. Mauro has convinced us that it was only Ricco’ and Pieopoli who broke the code of contact. If Mauro had aided or turned his head then we would have stopped with the team immediately. But we feel he is sincere and as you can imagine he was equally as upset and angry - especially at Ricco’ who had denied many questions prior to his positive test. As you can imagine in today’s world when you start absolutely dominating it is the team management who first knows and talks confidentially about these subjects. We are now going to pick up the pieces and start building for the future. You can be sure we will personally get much more involved in the code of conduct and anti-doping policy and procedures. By the way I spoke to SRAM and they are going to stand in there with us, as well as Ritchey so we are impressed by the loyalty of our many parts suppliers.
ST: What are your thoughts about drug use in cycling? Do you think enough is done to combat it?
Scott: It stinks. And though I believe in general it is much better than 10 years ago we still are not doing enough. It is a very, very, very complicated issue in all of sports. But we must continue to try to improve the situation.
ST: Do you think drug use is as common in other sports?
Scott: Well how much did you weigh in 12th grade? I was 125, now 150. Ever seen the line of a top tier college football team? They average about 350 at age 19!
ST: You recently signed Normann Stadler to race on Scott bicycles and use various Scott accessories. Does that to some degree allow you not to focus constantly on the recent TdF news?
Scott: Not really. Of course we are excited about Normann but as you can imagine the Tour is front page and center news in July, all of July, so it has taken center stage.
ST: Normann has been ill recently so we are still awaiting his debut on the bike. When will that be?
Scott: I hope soon. As you can imagine we were disappointed that he missed the European Ironman championships. I hope it will be soon. I called him today (Saturday) actually to discuss and I am waiting to hear back from him this week.
ST: Has he given you much feedback on the bike already?
Scott: Yes he rode the bike before he signed the contract. He came to us about riding for SCOTT. We are not in the habit of poaching athletes. But he wanted to make a change and so we let him test ride the Plasma2 and it was only after he had ridden the bike and was inspired about the product that we got serious about getting him on our program.
ST: Which other pro triathletes should we be seeing on the Plasma 2 soon?
Scott: Well of course there is the very strong Zoot team. Bree Wee could be a real sleeper in Kona, she was top amateur last year, and will race pro for the first time in Kona after many strong finishes this year. We were very pleased to see Christian Brader, take 4th last week at the Ironman in Lake Placid on his new Plasma2.
ST: How many bikes you think you’ll have in Hawaii?
Scott: Oh I don’t want to guess, but for sure I will be sitting there all day counting bikes with the rest of the tri-geek manufacturers. I am sure it will be a good day, our company is having a wonderful year.
ST: What is new for Scott in terms of road bikes?
Scott: We have the new Addict CX, our industry leading 990g carbon cyclocross frame coming out in September. We have our entire new line of Plasma2 frames, as well as the Plasma1 frame at a new competitive price point. The Addict has another new model with SRAM Rival. So lot’s of eye candy for 2009.
ST: Is there anything else we should know?
Scott: Just that I love the open structure of slowtwitch.com. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t learn something either reading the site or answering emails from the tribe. It is the best market research on the planet. Thanks for the interest and hope to talk soon.
